Root and Branch

by Preston Fleming

  Several in the room craned their necks to hear the answer.

  “We estimate a one percent chance of a subject being mischaracterized by one full risk category up or down. In other words, there’s a 99% probability that a rabid jihadist won’t score lower than Category Two, or that a non-violent Muslim won’t score higher than Category Two. And a ninety-five percent probability that our risk score will be accurate to within fifteen percentage points, or half a risk category.”

  Heads bobbed around the table except for Margaret Slattery, whose face exhibited an attitude midway between doubt and suspicion. For a moment, Zorn felt a twinge of anxiety, fearing that Slattery might have learned about DHS’s authority to manipulate a subject’s risk category. But in the next moment she looked away and said no more.

  A hand shot up from the opposite end of the table and Zorn acknowledged a question from the general officer with the bemedaled chest.

  “Over the past ten days, this so-called American Intifada has spread from a few cities to nearly two dozen. To stop it will require action on a scale not seen since World War II. So my question to you, Mr. Zorn, is this: how rapidly could your Triage system be deployed on a nationwide basis?”

  “I was hoping someone would ask that question, general,” Zorn replied to uneasy laughter. “Triage could be scaled up from its current pilot status to a national program on a month’s notice. We could have a hundred new operator-interviewer teams deployed within thirty days, conducting roughly ten thousand interviews per month. Then another hundred teams the second month, and a hundred more each month thereafter.”

  “And how many total interviews do you think would be required to cover America’s entire at-risk Muslim population and cull out the serious jihadis?”

  This question came from Pat Craven’s deputy, a veteran ICE enforcement officer who had attended the demonstration in Minneapolis.

  Zorn cast a glance at Choe, and then at Craven, before responding.

  “That all depends on your estimate of America’s total Muslim population and how many of them condone some form of Islamist violence. If you start with a figure of roughly two million Muslims, how many of them would you want to haul in for interviews in year one? The top half, perhaps? That would amount to a million interviews, or about eighty thousand per month.”

  Several committee members winced.

  “Too many?” Zorn continued. “Then how about the top quarter? That’s forty thousand interviews a month, requiring four hundred operator-interviewer teams and four months for hiring and training. It’s up to you how big and how fast you want to go.”

  The men from ICE whispered energetically among one another while their boss, Patrick Craven, listened with a solemn mien. For a moment, Zorn felt like the proverbial used car salesman asking his prospective customer, “Well, Mrs. Jones, how much money do you have to spend?”

  “Let’s start with how many names are on the terrorist watch list,” Slattery broke in. “Does anyone have that number?”

  The FBI man glanced down to consult notes scribbled on a yellow pad.

  “Depends which list you’re looking at,” the lawman pointed out. “The No-Fly List has about eighty thousand entries, and the Terrorist Screening Database has over two million, though not all those reside in North America.”

  Zorn glanced toward the head of the table, where Scudder’s face had darkened.

  “How about we start by interviewing the fifteen or twenty thousand suspects already locked up for rioting?” Scudder proposed. “Then pick whatever list you prefer and work your way down.”

  “Or perhaps we could consider a more gradual approach while we wait to see if the intifada tapers off,” Audrey Lamb suggested with a bland smile. At this, faces around the table registered alarm, as if Lamb had challenged the premise that the intifada constituted a national emergency. Nor was this an idea Zorn wanted to see take root.

  “At the risk of appearing self-serving,” Zorn interrupted, “if there’s one piece of advice I would leave with this committee, it’s that time is of the essence. Over the past century, the average insurgency anywhere in the world has lasted about a decade. I submit that Americans will not tolerate a ten-year intifada, much less fifteen years of simmering riots like those we’ve had in France. My advice is to crush the insurgents while we can.”

  Patrick Craven exchanged a meaningful look with Charles Scudder and Zorn knew that he had scored points with both. But Audrey Lamb would not concede.

  “These numbers you’ve been throwing about,” Lamb replied, waving a bejeweled hand in the air. “Two million Muslims prone to terrorist violence here. A million Triage interviews there. That’s a far larger program than anything this committee has ever considered. If your numbers are correct, it would transform our entire mission.”

  “All right, then, Audrey,” Patrick Craven broke in. “Just for argument’s sake, let’s pick a number of interviews toward the low end. So tell me, Roger, what percentage of interviewees would likely be rated high risk, and so require follow-up action?”

  Zorn leaned forward, rested his elbows on the table and steepled his fingers while mulling an answer.

  “In most Western countries, Category Ones come out at about ten percent of those tested, and Cat Twos at twenty to twenty-five percent. So about a third would need monitoring.”

  “Let’s see, then,” Craven continued, scratching his chin, “If we were to interview fifty thousand per month, we’d need to put about five thousand in detention and another ten or twelve thousand under surveillance. Mind you, that’s cumulative. So add in another batch each month.”

  “I see where you’re going with that,” the FBI man joined in. “But need I point out that the FBI has only about fifteen thousand special agents to carry out the Bureau’s entire range of missions? We wouldn’t have nearly enough people to do the work.”

  “And ICE currently has only about seven thousand enforcement agents,” Craven’s deputy added. “Against millions of illegal immigrants out there on the streets.”

  “Not to put too fine a point on it, Roger,” Craven joined in, “but round-the-clock roving surveillance, physical and electronic, can take up to two dozen officers for a single target. We’d be swamped on day one.”

  “And don’t forget the warrants required for all those investigations. The courts couldn’t possibly handle it,” Lamb pointed out.

  “ICE’s detention centers are already overflowing. We’d have nowhere to put them,” added the DHS deputy.

  Suddenly the many voices speaking at once rose to a clamor, and over that clamor came the sound of three hard raps on the table. The voices faded and all eyes turned to the head of the table.

  “I’d like to thank Mr. Zorn for giving us a timely wake-up call on the size of the effort required for our emergency measures to succeed,” Charles Scudder began. “After all, the purpose of using all this technology to single out dangerous jihadis isn’t just to keep an eye on them.” Here he paused before raising his voice. “It’s to get rid of them!”

  “Sir, with all due respect, I think the removals question may be outside the scope of today’s meeting,” Patrick Craven noted with calculated deference. “The Crisis Planning Group is the body tasked with that.”

  “Yes, and that group has decided that removals must be stepped up,” Scudder shot back.

  Several eyebrows went up around the table but Scudder ignored them.

  “The problem is that the Crisis Planners haven’t come to grips with the scale required,” Scudder went on. “So I think it’s high time we did the math for them. Let’s form a plan to perform as many interviews as we need to unmask the jihadis living among us; detain the ones with U.S. citizenship or permanent residence; and deport the rest.”

  A pause followed and Scudder ran his eyes around the table as if to lend weight to his pronouncement. But Margaret Slattery would have none of it.

  “It seems to me, Charlie,” she interrupted with a smile her eyes failed to share, “that yo
ur proposal for mass deportations presumes that most jihadists in America are removable aliens. What if that’s not true, and most are here legally?”

  The FBI man raised his hand.

  “Our data show that most of the radical Islamists on the Terrorist Screening Database entered illegally or overstayed their visa. So, yeah, I’d say removal would work quite well for most of the troublemakers.”

  “Well, good luck with that,” Audrey Lamb retorted in an acid tone. “This country can’t even muster the will to deport drug cartel kingpins. I don’t see public opinion getting behind mass deportation of Muslims based on some French company’s algorithm. The political will isn’t there.”

  Her remark was greeted by a loud guffaw from the head of the table. Heads turned to face the deputy national security advisor, who beamed incongruously at the lawyer.

  “For once, Audrey, I heartily agree with you,” Scudder said, leaning back in his swivel chair and crossing his long legs. “No, the public will never warm to mass deportations, not even of terror suspects. Which is exactly why key elements of the ESM program remain a secret.

  “Under the new emergency legislation,” he went on, “the president has unfettered authority to remove as many terror suspects as he sees fit. Now that we’ve all reached a better understanding of what that might entail, I’d like to see a plan from DHS to expand the detainee risk assessment program as rapidly as possible, along the lines that Mr. Zorn has proposed.”

  When Scudder ended his pronouncement, a satisfied smile spread across Roger Zorn’s face.

  When Zorn returned to work the following day, Brandon Choe pulled him aside.

  “I think our chances of winning the DRA contract just took a giant leap,” he told his boss with a grin that stretched from ear to ear.

  “What makes you think that?”

  “The DHS lawyers just sent over their draft nondisclosure agreement for us to sign. They wouldn’t have done that if we were out of the running. By the way, only top corporate officers will be granted a security clearance, because the ESM program is a special access project.”

  “SAP? Isn’t that just another species of top secret?”

  “Not exactly,” the former House Intelligence Committee staffer explained. “Special access information is more tightly controlled and it comes with stiffer sanctions for unauthorized disclosures.”

  “What kind of sanctions are we talking about?”

  “I’ve got the documents here,” Choe replied with a sober expression. “When you read them, you may think twice about signing.”

  “Okay, let’s see.”

  Choe removed the documents from a file folder and handed them over. Zorn sat down at Choe’s conference table and leafed through the pages. The penalties included loss of all security clearances, cancellation of government contracts, and felony prosecution. Whistleblower protections were specifically waived. And the signer was deemed to enter into a direct personal services contract with the government in addition to serving in his capacity as a Zorn Security employee.

  “Wow,” Zorn said with a low whistle. “When did this sort of thing become standard practice for government contractors?”

  “It’s not, except for SAPs. The jacked-up enforcement provisions came out of the aerospace sector. People entrusted with Uncle Sam’s crown jewels face every imaginable sanction, up to and including sudden disappearance, staged suicide, and death by suspicious accident or expedited natural causes.”

  Zorn looked up to see if Choe was joking but there was no smile on his face.

  “I’ve never seen language like this, not even in the former Soviet Union,” Zorn remarked. “It’s like signing your own death warrant and paying in advance for the bullet.”

  “I got the documents a couple of hours ago and ran them by our outside law firm,” Choe said. “The lead partner called me a few minutes ago and warned against signing.”

  “Of course. No one in his right mind would sign a document like that without negotiating…”

  “No, Roger, you don’t understand,” Choe interrupted, shaking his head, “the DHS lawyers say the document is non-negotiable. The choice is between signing and withdrawing our bid.“

  “That can’t be right,” Zorn snapped. “Everything is negotiable in business. You know that, Brandon.”

  “Not in the national security arena. At least, not any more. These SAPs are a brave new world. Every secret is treated like the Manhattan Project or reverse-engineered alien flight tech. It’s the government’s way of insuring that contractors have skin in the game.”

  “More like a pound of flesh, if you ask me. Let me run it by Walter and see if he’s come across this sort of thing before.”

  But the moment Zorn began dialing Walter Lang’s number he thought better of it. For Lang, winning the DRA contract was an all-or-nothing play. An oppressive NDA meant nothing to him if it would help land the contract. Lang would volunteer to sign it himself if that’s what it came to.

  So Zorn told Choe to send the documents for him to review. An hour later, he dropped off the signed NDAs at the receptionist’s desk and told her to send them to DHS by courier before day’s end. Zorn Security bore his name, after all, and if someone’s skin were needed in the game, it ought to be his.

  Chapter Seven: Anarchist

  “My friends are my friends only so long as they think as I do politically.”

  –Ernesto “Che” Guevara

  EARLY APRIL, RESTON, VIRGINIA

  It was the season of hope and rain in Reston, Virginia, where cherry blossoms bloomed and a warm wind swept in from the Blue Ridge Mountains. Jack Nagy, retired career CIA officer, stood on the deck of his rented townhouse and struck a match to ignite his gas grill, all the while keeping an eye peeled for his daughter’s approach. Nagy had a son, too, but since the family’s return to the States six years before, and after a divorce that hit him like a broadside car wreck, his nineteen-year old daughter Carol was the only member of his family who still spoke to him.

  Carol, a sophomore at George Washington University, remained Nagy’s golden girl, the one aspect of his family life that he hadn’t totally bungled. She had blown up at him a dozen times since the divorce, but had always come back to work things out. By nature she wasn’t an angry person, and she hadn’t sided blindly with her mother during the split. Nor had she let their opposing political views get between them. As for her student radicalism, which included joining demonstrations each weekend against the new president, Nagy was sure that it was just a passing phase.

  From the townhouse deck, Nagy spotted his daughter about a hundred yards off, parking her ten-year-old red Corolla at the curb along a row of cheaply constructed two-story townhouses. His own unit was one of the smaller ones in Reston. He had rented it fully furnished from a young Agency officer posted to one of the Central Asian “stans.” The unit wasn’t elegant, but it was affordable, and he had no desire at this stage in his life to invest in a houseful of furniture after giving up the family’s residence in suburban Oakton, with all its furnishings, in the divorce settlement.

  It had been nearly five years since the breakup. His ex-wife, a resentful, long-suffering woman whose typical day overseas began at noon with her first slug of vodka, had waited until Jack announced his retirement before filing for divorce. She ended up taking the house, both children, the SUV, and half of his comfortable CIA pension. But what might have been comfortable for one household didn’t stretch to cover two. So Jack became a CIA double-dipper, collecting retirement benefits while doing whatever contract work the Agency sent his way, which seemed to dwindle from one year to the next.

  Carol arrived at the door with a bottle of red wine in hand, an inexpensive Bordeaux that was one of Jack’s standard go-to table wines. She wore a navy hooded fleece over jeans and a dark t-shirt, with her mahogany hair pulled back into a ponytail. Carol had inherited her father’s slender frame, wide mouth, olive complexion, and dark brown eyes and hair. But at five feet four, she had to ris
e on tiptoes to peck Jack on both cheeks.

  Since this was a school night, Jack Nagy led his daughter promptly into the kitchen, uncorked and poured the wine, and resumed dinner preparation while giving his daughter time to talk freely about what was going on in her life. For Nagy, the need to build rapport with his only daughter had never been more urgent. And after three decades of handling difficult agents, he knew better than to risk spoiling their weekly conversation with anything controversial. But later, without realizing it, that was exactly what he did.

  “So how’s dorm life?” he asked while peeling a clove of garlic. “Miss your mother’s cooking yet?”

  “You can’t be serious, Dad,” Carol replied, rolling her eyes while she took a sip of wine. “Mom’s idea of cooking is reheating take-out.”

  “Well, unless things have changed more than I imagine, dining hall food can’t be much better. And how about trading in your private room for one with a roommate? You can’t tell me you don’t miss your walk-in closet.”

  “Au contraire,” Carol insisted. “Believe me, Dad, the happiest day in my life was when I moved out of that house and into my dorm room. You can’t imagine.”

  “But I thought you liked where we lived.”

  Nagy picked up his glass of wine and studied Carol’s face. Her response was to wrinkle her nose in disgust.

  “I positively hated it there! Each time we came back from overseas and moved back in there, I’d show up at school and my oldest friends pretended not to know me. How do you suppose that made me feel?”

  “Come on, Carol, be fair. You spent most of your childhood overseas. You can’t expect young kids to remember you when you’ve been away for years at a stretch. Things change. People change.”

  “Oh, but they did remember me, Dad. It’s just that they were so stuck-up and cliquish that they didn’t want to show it. The kids in my dorm are totally different. A lot of them are foreign students, or Americans who’ve spent time abroad. We were all raised differently, but it’s amazing how often we see things the same way.”